The bus pirate v3 is a like a leatherman for electronics protocols. “Talk to 1-wire, I2C, UART (async serial), SPI, JTAG, MIDI, LCDs, PC keyboards, and a ton of generic serial devices from a terminal.” The web is full of stories of people rescuing laptops and reverse engineering all kinds of devices using bus pirates.
The original design is open hardware, we’ll be using it with a custom PCB design, also open hardware – I’m calling it LTS (for learn to solder). The schematic is the same but the PCB uses a much bigger board (50×100) and replaces some of the tiny components on the production model with 1206 components that are much easier to solder. Eagle design files are at https://github.com/vhs/vhs-pcbs/tree/master/bus-pi…
There are some very fine pitch parts on this board, help will be available to solder them but you’ll need a steady hand and a fine tipped soldering iron. This workshop is more expensive because of the ICs on this board but still good value.
If time permits we’ll also cut some Sick-of-Beige cases on the laser cutter to suit your new tool (as shown in the photo).
Unfortunately the batch of pcbs I have uses a component that I can no longer buy so I need to defer this workshop into February until I can get more PCBs.
@jon do you want a refund or are you happy to wait?
The BPv3 uses LDO regulators with enable pins. I switched to a 223-5 package (I think) to make them easier to solder than the SOT23-5. I can’t get them in 3.3V, to honest not sure I ever could
I’m on the fence for this workshop because I’ve never used a Bus Pirate, and I am wondering what makes it different from using an Arduino for talking those protocols. What does it do better? Is it substantially more convenient? Is the software support and online community better? What makes people reach for a Bus Pirate rather than an Arduino?
With an Arduino, you have to program it to do what you want, every time.
The BusPirate has all of the protocols built in, along with all of the
possible options (stop bits, polarity, baud rate, etc).
It communicates over a serial port, so there’s no messing around with the
Arduino IDE or a compiler.
There are also Python libraries to easily script with it, and has built in
cables with wire grabbers (if you choose to get that option (get that
option, it’s worth it))
So yeah, there’s nothing it can do that an Arduino can’t do, it’s just much
more convenient a one-use device that’s known-good makes it a tool, not
another project on the road to finishing the projects you actually care
about.
It also has some of the linux like i2c stuff that you don’t generally see on arduino, like device id scans to reverse engineer what devices are on a bus. Personally I use mine mostly with dedicated AVR programmer firmware, it does a good job of this too. The BP is still really popular so it seems to have its place.
I did this workshop last year and made a case for mine. The case was one of my first projects with the laser and I was so impressed with myself that I wrote it up on my blog!